Jacob Heilbrunn

In 2013, the IRS targeted the Tea Party and other conservative organizations for special scrutiny. Four years later, the federal government reached a settlement and the IRS apologized. Is it about to be déjà vu all over again? The Trump administration is embarking upon a major campaign against leading liberal organizations. The first shot came in late August when President Trump demanded that the liberal billionaire George Soros and his son, Alex, be charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for supporting violent protests across America. The libertarian CATO Institute, a redoubt for decades of free speech advocates, promptly observed that “the call to prosecute may be bluster.” Wrong.

Was there a plot against President Trump at the United Nations? Upon his arrival, the escalator apparently stopped working. Next his teleprompter failed. Small wonder that Trump was in less than a concessive mood as he delivered his speech denouncing the UN itself as a colossal failure. The result was the kind of talk he would give to a political rally – except it was to an unreceptive, if not hostile, audience. Throughout, Trump made it clear that his estimation of his abilities is very different from his view of the UN. “I’m really good at this stuff,” he declared. “I’ve been right about everything.” As for everyone else: “Your countries are going to hell.

Tyler Robinson, who has been charged with seven counts, including aggravated murder, appeared in court on Tuesday.   Clad in what appeared to be an anti-suicide vest, the 22-year-old sat in front of a blank wall that mirrored his own silence. But in its lapidary tone, the indictment that the Utah prosecutors have compiled speaks volumes.   In all likelihood, the alleged assassin will receive the death penalty. “I do not take this decision lightly, and it is a decision I have made independently as county attorney based solely on the available evidence and circumstances and nature of the crime,” Jeffrey S. Gray said at a press conference.  Gray seems to be a model prosecutor.

Charlie Kirk was shot on stage yesterday, speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University. The Turning Point USA co-founder was announced dead by the President of the United States. ‘The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!’ Debate is supposed to be the essence of the college experience, and the American experience.

It was back to black for Volodymyr Zelensky. After the Trump White House asked whether he was going to wear a suit for his Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainian president showed up in a dark military-style jacket, pleasing his hosts to no end. Even Brian Glenn, boyfriend of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and reporter for Real America’s Voice, who had dissed Zelensky in February, commended him on his habiliments, declaring 'you look fabulous in that suit.' Zelensky was pleased. So was Trump. The biggest obstacle to a peace deal, of course, is whether Putin even wants one In fact, Trump was on his best behaviour.

John Reed, a young Harvard graduate and journalist, thought highly of the Bolshevik revolution and chronicled it in his book Ten Days That Shook the World. He is one of three Americans buried along the Kremlin Wall. Will Russian President Vladimir Putin extend a similar honor to Michael Alexander Gloss, the son of Juliane Gallina, a deputy director for digital innovation at the CIA? Earlier this week, Putin handed President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff something from Russia with love – the Order of Lenin. Putin apparently intended for it to be passed on to Gallina whose 21-year-old son died fighting with Russian forces against Ukraine in 2024. The Order was created in 1930 by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union.

Already the Kremlin is setting the terms of the forthcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff, Trump's emissary, set the meeting in motion with his mission to Moscow on Wednesday, which Trump called “highly productive.” But productive of what? Putin’s foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov stated today that it was the White House, not the Kremlin, that wanted the meeting. He went on to dismiss Trump's proposal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could take part in a tripartite negotiation, noting that “for this to happen, certain conditions must be created. Unfortunately, such conditions are far away yet.” Those conditions remain the complete surrender of Ukraine.  The Kremlin, in other words, has a strategic plan.

The Trump White House took a victory lap on Monday, declaring in its newsletter that the American economy is back – back bigger and better than ever. Core inflation is down. Industrial production is up. Claims for unemployment dropped. Tariff revenue rose. The newsletter even cites the Wall Street Journal—otherwise in bad odor in the Trump White House – for decreeing that the American economy is “regaining its swagger.” Is it time to splurge on a fancy vacation? As it happens, I’m currently visiting Vermont where the number of tourists is distinctly lower than in previous years.

Bombshell or damp squib? The Wall Street Journal has dived into L’Affaire Epstein with a vengeance, reporting tonight that Donald Trump contributed an epistolary effort to a leather-bound birthday book in 2003 for his Palm Beach buddy that contained what it delicately refers to as “bawdy language” as well as a drawing of a naked woman. The letter that has Trump’s name affixed to it apparently concludes, “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”  This is catnip for Trump’s detractors who apparently are starting to include a number of disaffected MAGA followers. They’re disenchanted by Trump’s volte-face.

No, President Trump wasn’t referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin when he talked at a White House luncheon today about a “stupid guy” and a “knucklehead.” But he did make it clear that his long-standing bromance with the Kremlin’s big cheese has turned out to be unrequited, much to his distress.   Trump lamented that Putin’s talk about peace was so much rodomontade, amounting to more than a “nice phone call” followed by a bunch of missiles lobbed at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. It was Melania, he said, who had noted to him the inconsistency between Putin’s words and deeds. Perhaps Melania, more than anyone else, injected some iron into Trump’s previously anemic posture towards Moscow.

Forget Elon Musk. House Speaker Mike Johnson is President Trump’s new partner, delivering the victory that he needed to ensure the transformation of the 887-page mega-bill into mega-law, right on the cusp of July 4. The vote was close – 218-214 – but decisive. The internal opposition crumbled. The Democrats could only impede, not stymie, the passage of the bill.   When the Louisiana legislator replaced the luckless Kevin McCarthy as Speaker in October 2023, Republican diehards pledged that they would sink Johnson, too, should he deviate from conservative orthodoxy. But again and again, they have proven to be all hat and no cattle. Despite the bluster of the Ralph Normans and the Thomas Massies, the House has remained solidly behind Johnson and a fortiori Trump.

It’s a time, as a great Republican once announced, for choosing. Elon or the Donald? After they seemed to reach a détente, open hostilities have now resumed. This isn’t a cold war but a hot one that could go nuclear at any moment. To borrow from Trump’s own comment about Israel and Iran, we basically have two guys that "have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing." Will it jeopardize Trump’s chances for a Nobel Peace Prize? Are foreign mediators necessary to create a new ceasefire? Musk is threatening to launch and fund a new political party, much in the spirit of Nigel Farage’s Reform party, that could crater Republican political fortunes in the midterm elections. If anyone could succeed, it would be Musk.

Donald Trump is on a roll. Last week, he bombed Iran and imposed a ceasefire on Tehran and Jerusalem. Now the Supreme Court, in its final day of session, has handed him another victory by constraining the power of federal judges to constrain the executive branch. The verdict is clear: the Trump administration will have much more latitude to recast America.In essence, the Supreme Court is consolidating a conservative counter-revolution that began, as Sam Tanenhaus notes in his exemplary new biography of William F. Buckley, Jr., after World War II and is reaching full flower under Trump. Once upon a time, liberals enacted sweeping policies and programs through the courts. Now it is the right’s turn.

So much for the contention that President Donald Trump always chickens out. Trump has done what George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden contemplated but never executed: bombing Iran's main nuclear sites with a combination of bunker busters and Tomahawk cruise missiles.  In his brief White House address on Saturday night, Trump exuded confidence, stating that the Iranian nuclear program had been "obliterated." But he made it clear that he is prepared to up the ante, pledging that if Iran doesn't agree to a peace deal, then the bombing campaign will be expanded. Trump said that the US “will go to those other targets with precision, speed and skill." America is now at war with Iran. Already Trump's MAGA followers are (largely) hailing his audacious decision.

The surprising thing isn’t that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Iran. It’s that the current bombing campaign didn’t occur sooner. Netanyahu has been inveighing against the Iran threat for decades. The prospect that Trump might be prepared to cut a nuclear deal with the Iranian mullahs finally forced his hand. Trump, who based much of his MAGA movement around opposition to endless wars in the Middle East, has been outmaneuvered by Bibi. Intent on a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump proclaimed that he would secure an end to the Ukraine war within 24 hours. Then he focused his attentions on Iran. But his impulse to avoid war, any war, in the Middle East has been foiled.